American

John Bloom

U.S. 1906-2002
County Fair 88.0014

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Many of Bloom's later compositions and ideas came from sketches or unfinished works that he first did in the 1930s. For over sixty years, in murals, in easel paintings, in prints, and in sculpture, John Bloom observed and recorded the people and places around him, keeping the spirit of regionalist art alive. Iowa native John Bloom was nearing the age of eighty before his career as an artist intensified. Bloom studied at the Art Institute in Chicago from 1926-1930. Bloom's success for the last twenty years of his life was based on a style of painting he learned while studying and working with Grant Wood at the Stone City Artists' Colony in the 1930s. In 1932, he could not afford the $40 tuition for Wood's summer mentoring, so he covered the tuition the first summer serving as the school's groundskeeper. Wood later invited Bloom back as a teacher.

 

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